Death of a Daredevil

Ricky

I feel like I kind of wake up.

I'm sitting in my wheelchair, smelling... bad, looking bad, slumped and bent, right leg braced and stiff as a board, pelvis healed wrong so it has to be rebroken someday (yeah, I'd almost forgotten that), right arm so weak I can barely move it sometimes, my back and ribs feeling like a cage, and, when I cry, I can't get enough breath in me because those two lung lobes hold less than they used to. And this kid... Ricky... is sitting on the edge of my bed, leaning over me, arms wrapped around me. He kept whispering, "it's okay," over and over, until I stopped crying. ...And he held his head next to mine. Everything slowly calms down. He lifts his head away, takes his arms from me, and sits back. I feel like I kind of wake up, and...

It's better.

"Thanks," I say. And then he starts talking -- more words than I've ever heard him say. And not just any words...

"My brother shot himself in the head by accident," he said. "Two years ago. We didn't live here then, but my mom moved us here. She was so pissed at my dad for leaving his gun out, so... so he's gone. Anyway, my brother, he was a year older than me, and he had dad's gun from somewhere. He was pointing it at things and pulling the trigger, and nothing was happening. He pointed it at me and said, 'time to die dickface,' pulled the trigger, and nothing happened, then he pretended he was blowing smoke away from the end of the gun and he pulled something on the top, pointed it at the side of his head, gave me this goofy look, and pulled the trigger. It was the loudest sound I ever heard. He fell down and lay there, shaking weird. ...He didn't die.

Ricky looks at me. "Just like you didn't die.

"But my brother," he says, "was brain damaged. He couldn't move or feel anything on the left side of his body. He couldn't think right or talk, and his organs didn't work right. He was in a wheelchair like you, but he couldn't do anything at all. "Time to die dickface," was the last thing he said that I could understand, and I tried a million times, but he... he was... he was wrecked. It was barely him." And now Ricky's eyes were wet, but he didn't cry.

"He died last summer, I mean summer before last summer, like a year and a couple months ago. He just died in the night." Ricky nodded his head. "Yeah, they said that might happen -- because his brain was so messed up."

"Wow," I said. "Wow."

"I know. And when you told your story, you scared everyone in the cafeteria -- even the teachers. I saw a couple of them. You scared them all, because you told how something went way wrong and someone died, and you should have died, but Matty's body saved you. You lived, but it's all wrong, and it can happen to anyone, and you never, ever know when or how. Like Terry."

"...Your brother?"

"Yeah. Terry was my brother. Terrence James Caulfield Van Drees. You never know."

We were quiet for a minute, but then we started talking about little stuff. He asked about my Gorillaz poster. We talked about Rick and Morty for awhile. He liked my shoes (I have some great shoes). He saw my Switch and said he had one too, and we argued about which fighters were best in Super Smash Brothers, even though neither of us played that game much anymore. It all made me feel like I was younger. I think he was maybe remembering stuff he did with his brother part of the time. But after about a half hour, we ran out of stuff to talk about.

"I should go," he said. He smiled, kind of stood there for a second, then gave me a little wave and headed for the door.

"Um," I started. He turned around. "Could you..." He watched me. "Would you..."

"Yeah?" he asked.

I took a deep breath. "Could you... help me take a shower?"

He smiled. "Sure," he said. "And I'm good at it already -- it was my job with my brother, when he was... You know."

"Thanks," I said, suddenly nervous. Why did I just do that? Oh shit. I realized what I had just asked. Oh shit.

"Don't worry," Ricky said. "Don't worry at all. I know what to do, and it will be fine, and I'll never tell anyone if you don't want, even my mom."

I must have had a strange look on my face, because he just started laughing.